Facts About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present: Aymara

Aymara

M. /. Hardman

Language Name: Aymara. Alternates: Aimara, Jaqi aru.

Location: Bolivia, southern Peru, and northern Chile; and, by migration, Buenos Aires and the coastal cities of Peru
(Tacna, Arequipa, Canete, and Lima).

Family: Jaqi.

Related Languages: Jaqaru and Kawki, the other extant Jaqi languages.

Dialects: The main dialect divisons are among (1) the area around Lake Titicaca including Huancane, Juli, Socca, and
LaPaz; (2) the areas south, primarily the Bolivian Departments of Oruro and Potosi; (3) east in Calacoa and Sitajara in
Peru; and (4) the Aymara spoken in northern Chile and southern Peru (Moquegua). While dialectal differences are
relatively minor, mutual understanding is virtually always possible, usually with ease.

There are three additional social dialects: the Missionary, the Overlord, and the Radio. These are all a product of
contact with Spanish, the first two dating from the 16th century, the latter more recently. This article gives examples in the
dialect from the La Paz region, the one with the largest number of speakers.

Number of Speakers: 3.5 million, according to calculations by native speakers and researchers. Government census
numbers are sometimes as low as 1 .75 million.

Origin and History

Aymara is the second most widely spoken indigenous language
of South America (quechua is the first). It is the first language
of approximately one-third of the population of Bolivia. The
Aymara-speaking population in Peru is considerably smaller,
both in absolute size and in relation to the nation, but Aymara
is nonetheless the dominant language of the southern area of
that country. In northern Chile there are more than 20,000 per-
sons who speak Aymara. Although the Aymara community is
politically divided by the border between Peru and Bolivia
which divides Lake Titicaca between the two countries, there
is great unity in language and culture.

The Aymara are predominantly farmers and pastoralists, with
the marketing of their own or their neighbors' products play-
ing an important economic role. Most of the marketing, both
wholesale and retail, domestic and international, is done by
women.

Aymara is a member of the Jaqi language group, which in-
cludes two other known extant languages: Jaqaru and Kawki,
both spoken in Peru. Archaeological and linguistic evidence
points to a much wider distribution of the Jaqi languages in
prehistoric times, at least as far north as Cajamarca in Peru and
deep into Chile and Argentina in the south. The proto lan-
guage — Proto- Jaqi — would appear to be the language of the
Huari expansion, about a.d. 650. Proto- Jaqi became a major
imperial language of Peru, serving as a lingua franca for the
Huari culture which had an extensive trading network and road
system.

Between about a.d. 400 and 800, Proto-Jaqi split and one
branch became Proto-Aymara. After the collapse of the Huari
culture, around 1000, the various Jaqi languages were iso-

lated from each other. When the Incas, who were Puquina
speakers, arrived in Cuzco to establish their own empire, they
adopted a coastal language, Quechua, as their empire's lin-
gua franca. (Although Quechua languages belong to a differ-
ent language family, there has been contact between the two
families for a minimum of two millennia.) The switch to
Quechua took place less than a century before the European
conquest. The bulk of the Aymara population was gradually
pushed southward until that language came to occupy the area
formerly held by Puquina speakers, around and south of Lake
Titicaca. With the coming of the Europeans, most of the Jaqi
languages died out, either by population loss or by enforced
adoption of Quechua, continuing the process begun by the
Incas. Spanish, brought by the Europeans, is the dominant
language of South America today.

The first grammar of Aymara was by the Jesuit priest,
Ludovico Bertonio (1603). In the same year he published in
Rome two books, the Arte y gramatica muy copiosa de la
lengua aymara and Arte breve de la lengua aymara, para
introduccion del arte grande de la misma lingua. A second
early grammar is that of Padre Diego de Torres Rubio, Arte de
la lengua Aymara, published in 1616. Subsequent grammars
have been largely copied, or miscopied, from these early works.
All of the grammars have shared problems arising from an
imposed Indo-European world view.

Hardman, M. J. 2000. Aymara. In Garry, Jane and
Carl Rubino (eds.) Facts About the World's Languages:
An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past
and Present. New York/Dublin: H. W Wilson.